Good afternoon, everyone. I'm happy to be in Ottawa to speak to you this afternoon. My name is Jacquie Maund, and I'm the coordinator of Ontario Campaign 2000.
Campaign 2000 is a national non-partisan coalition of over 120 organizations across the country that is committed to ending child and family poverty in Canada. Our name comes from the 1989 unanimous House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by 2000. Each year, on the anniversary of that resolution, we produce a report card of the latest statistics on child and family poverty in Canada. Our numbers come from Statistics Canada. The most recent data, from 2004, are the numbers I'll refer to this afternoon. I brought a copy of that report for you.
We use the pre-tax, low-income cutoff from Statistics Canada as the definition of poverty: the pre-tax LICO. Our findings show that poverty rates are consistently higher among female-lone-parent-led families, so we appreciate the opportunity to present to this committee at the hearings on women and economic security.
I would like to start by summarizing some of the findings in this report card on child poverty in Canada. It shows that approximately 1.2 million children are living below the poverty line; that's equivalent to about one in every six children. Over the past 25 years the poverty rate of children in Canada has never dropped below that rate of 1989, which was 15%. We've never actually achieved a lower rate of child and family poverty since this resolution was made.
Our findings show that economic growth is not solving our child and family poverty problem in Canada. Despite very strong growth over the past few years, Canada's child poverty rate has remained stalled at about 17% or 18%. We see a growing proportion of working poor families. One-third of low-income children in Canada have at least one parent in the workforce working full time, full year, and yet that family is not able to earn sufficient income to lift them above the poverty line. That number is up from 27% twelve years ago, so there's an increase in terms of the number of working poor families.
We also know that public programs make a difference in reducing child and family poverty. If we did not have programs like the Canada child tax benefit and others, our poverty rates in 2004 would have been 24%, not 17%. Government programs do make a difference.
I'd like to talk a bit more about female-lone-parent families, who are particularly vulnerable to poverty. Poverty rates are disproportionately high among female-led families. Approximately 52% of all low-income children in Canada live in families headed by lone mothers. Yet according to the 2001 census, only 15% of all Canadian children are in female-lone-parent-headed families. They are disproportionately high among that segment of our population.
When we talk about poverty, we also want to highlight how poor people are and how far below the poverty level the average family is. What our statistics show is that the average two-parent low-income family would need an additional $10,400 per year just to bring them up to the poverty level. If we look at female-lone-parent families, they're slightly better off. The average female-lone-parent-led family would need an additional $9,400 to bring them up to the poverty level. Our numbers indicate that those figures have not changed much since the early nineties. So again, despite strong economic growth, we have not seen much of a reduction in the depth of poverty that these families are living in.
If we look at families receiving social assistance, of the total number of children in those families, 71% are in families headed by lone mothers. That's equivalent to about 339,000 children across the country who are living in female-lone-parent families that are receiving social assistance. The vast majority, over 90%, of those lone-parent families are typically led by women.
I'll move now to some of the reasons behind our high child poverty rate and speak about those, trying to focus a little on the particular issue of female lone parents.
Campaign 2000 talks about two main reasons behind the persistence of a high child and family poverty rate in Canada. Those are first, the weakened social safety net in our country, and second, changes in the labour market over the past couple of decades.
When parents are unable to be in the workforce and are not eligible for employment insurance, social assistance—welfare—becomes the program of last resort. The work of the National Council of Welfare shows that welfare incomes are far below the poverty line. For example, the welfare rates for families with children reach only 55% to 60% of the poverty line.
Despite increased government spending on child benefits, specifically in 1998 with the introduction of the Canada child tax benefit, most families with children have seen little improvement if any in their income situation when they're relying on social assistance. Part of the reason is that social assistance rates have not kept up with inflation and are inadequate, and also that many provinces continue to claw back part of the national child benefit supplement.
Welfare rules stipulate the amount of income recipients are allowed to keep. For example, for female lone parents, typically, if they're able to get child support payments from their spouse, that money is deducted from their social assistance cheques. They're not allowed to keep it.
Employment insurance no longer provides a safety net for the majority of workers who are temporarily unemployed. As of 2004, only about 44% of people who were unemployed were actually receiving employment insurance, compared with 75% ten years ago. Those are some aspects of the weakened social safety net.
Looking at the labour market, we find that despite strong job creation and low unemployment, more and more families are working, but they're not able to get jobs with sufficient pay, benefits, and hours to lift their families above the poverty line. Low wages are part of the reason behind that.
One in every four jobs in Canada pays less than $10 an hour. If we look only at full-time jobs, one in every six full-time jobs is low-wage work paying less than $10 an hour. Women are more likely to be found in low-wage jobs than men; 22% of women are in low-paid jobs, compared with 12% of men. Women earn approximately 71% of what men earn for full-time, full-year work.
Increased education does not make up much more of the difference. It comes up to about 74%, I think, if you look only at people with similar education levels.
So low-wage work is part of the reason behind disproportionately high poverty rates.
Then, if we look at the nature of work, non-standard, precarious employment now makes up 37% of all jobs in Canada, compared with 25% in the mid-1970s. When we talk about precarious work we're talking, for example, about part-time work, temporary work, contract work, and self-employed jobs.
The vast majority of part-time workers, 70%, are women. People who are in contract, temporary, and self-employed jobs are not covered by employment standards legislation, so workers in those jobs are at higher risk of unpaid wages, of wages below the legal minimum, and of unpaid work for statutory holidays and overtime. If we look at who is most typically in those kinds of precarious jobs, it is women, new immigrants, and visible minorities.
Looking at child care, we know from our work that access to affordable, good-quality early learning and child care is a key pathway out of poverty to both enable parents to receive training and get jobs and also to ensure that children's well-being is stimulated in their early years and that they're well prepared for school.
Canada has one of the highest rates of labour force participation by women in the OECD. There are about three million children who have a mother in the paid labour force, yet there are fewer than 800,000 regulated child care spaces in Canada. Those figures are for 2003.
I have a reference to a study—I have left you copies—that looks specifically at lone mothers, where we found that access to subsidized, regulated child care was critical to their ability to obtain and to maintain employment.
I'd like to conclude with five recommendations aimed at the federal level.
One, we should ensure effective child income benefits. The Canada child tax benefit is scheduled to reach its maximum of $3,243 this July. Campaign 2000 calls for a Canada child tax benefit of $5,100 per child per year. There needs to be an assurance of no clawbacks at the provincial level.
Two, we call on the federal government to create a system of early learning and child care programs in consultation with the provinces; to come to new bilateral and multilateral agreements that represent the interests of Canadians; and to direct funding to building a national system that's regulated, high-quality, accessible, and affordable.
Three, we want to see encouragement of good jobs at living wages. We call for the federal government to establish a minimum wage of $10 an hour, indexed to inflation. This, in combination with an improved Canada child tax benefit of $5,100, would bring, for example, a single mother with one child approximately up to the poverty line. We also call for the federal government to strengthen the Canada Labour Code--as recommended last October by Harry Arthurs, the federal commissioner--and to restore eligibility for employment insurance to address the significant declining coverage.
Four, expand affordable housing. Canada is one of the few countries in the world without a comprehensive affordable housing strategy with permanent funding.
And five, support affordable and accessible post-secondary education and training. We know that the lack of financial assistance for training programs and the lack of access to subsidized training make it very difficult for lone parents, overwhelmingly women, to move off social assistance and get out of the cycle of poverty.
Thank you.
